F-101B&T-33

This is a picture of a F-101B after landing with the drag chute deployed. This is the type of aircraft I worked on while at Dow Airplane Patch and at K.I.Sawyer (which I will get to after I get done with my time in Maine). This is not one of the planes that I worked on, but it is one of the better photos I was able to find on the intratubes.

This is a picture of a T-33A. Again this is not one that I worked on. We had F-101B&F and T-33A aircraft in the unit. It was on these types of aircraft that I learned the ins and outs of aircraft repair. We did less work on the T-33's than on the F-101's but the F-101's were flown a lot more than the T-33's. What was interesting about the T-33 was that when the jet engine needed to be removed for maintenance, the whole tail was removed, and then the engine was removed.

Behind the engines under the tail of the F-101 were titanium shingles because of the heat from the exhaust. This was my first encounter with titanium, but not the last by any means. About the only thing I had to do with these titanium panels was to punch holes in new ones when one needed to be replaced.

At the time I thought these planes were old as the F-101's were around 10 years old and the T-birds were older yet. Today some of the planes the services are using are 20 years old or more.